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Sunday, August 17, 2014

MCU Park

MCU Park
1904 Surf Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11224

August 2, 2014
Our first TBB-sanctioned trip to a minor league baseball game. Which also happened to be Star Wars Night. Coincidence? Nope. We also brought Lara with us. It's unclear as to whether or not Lara has actually been to a baseball game before, so we're going to go ahead and declare that we brought Lara to her very first baseball game. Unfortunately, we forgot to document this moment with a photo because we were too busy being wowed by all of the perks being at a minor league game included. So, we apologize for that failure.

Since we're not that familiar with Brooklyn, we got hosed on parking. We paid (or rather, Lara paid) $20 for parking at a lot across the street. When we walked to the ballpark, we noticed a lot right next door to the stadium advertising parking for $5. We're a-holes. If we'd just driven a little further, we could've saved Lara $5.

Once inside the stadium, we got our free giveaway, which was a Padawan Pee-Wee bobblehead. The bobblehead exhibits a higher level of craftsmanship than Jedi D'Arnaud.

We noticed a few things immediately. For starters, there isn't a whole lot to the place. That's not to say that it isn't a nice ballpark. It's just incredibly small when compared to the MLB stadiums. The second thing we noticed is that the Star Wars characters were awful. Our Halloween costumes were better than theirs (with a few exceptions). The upside to this was the fact that the people in costume were SUPER into it. In fact, the stadium itself was super into the theme night. The Cyclones wore special Darth Maul jerseys for the night and changed their name to the "Sithclones."

Before getting food, we found our seats. This is the view you can get at MCU Park for a whopping $16:

Impressive, no? We sat in our seats for a solid 5 minutes before deciding that we needed our first round of food. We got a Nathan's bacon wrapped hot dog called "The King Dog" for $7.50/each and 40 oz. beers for $7/each. Lara got herself a hot Italian sausage for $6.50.

The hot dog was acceptable, though not nearly as good as we anticipated considering it was wrapped in bacon. Lara's sausage on the other hand was what dreams are made of. Finally, we found the sausage to usurp the RFK & Yankee Stadium sandwiches. What a piece of meat. All we had to do was travel to Brooklyn to find it. Who knew? Leave it to Brooklyn to have a tasty piece of Italian sausage.

Our second round of food included fries for $7.50 (Serena), a pulled pork sandwich for $8, and bacon on a stick for $7 (Lara - Lara basically went ape sh*t on food). While waiting on an unnecessarily long line for fries, Serena missed an epic light saber duel on the field. Lisa managed to snap a photo to show her when she got back. Lara's sandwich was decent, the meat having been cooked in bacon grease (which is fun for fatties of all ages), but the really beauty of the night was her bacon on a stick from the Big Guy NYC stand. Their slogan is "slap that pig." It was literally the best piece of meat we've ever put in our mouths. In the history of meatkind. Thank god for Lara. She insisted that she go on a hunt for that stand once we heard about it. Us? We were too lazy to follow. If she hadn't chased that stand down and missed 2 innings of baseball, we never would've gotten the opportunity to make sweet, sweet love to a bacon on a stick.

The Cyclones have an MC called King Henry. He is ridiculous and amazing. He is fat and he wears a crown. He danced and offered a free quesadilla giveaway to one lucky fan. It wasn't us.

Serena remembered to bring her minor league ballpark mini TrapperKeeper with her (Lisa forgot...again...because she's an a-hole), so before it got too late, she left to find the validation station. While she was gone, she missed a hot dog race (ketchup one) and another light saber duel. Stupid.

As we mentioned earlier, we forgot to take any photos of us, but we didn't forget to take pictures of the Cyclones' seagull mascots: Pee-Wee and Sandy.

If anyone knows what this light up vibrator thing in right field is, please enlighten us. We will mail you a dollar for your insights.

As we left, we took photos of the ballpark and of the Jackie Robinson statue (because we forgot to do that when we arrived - we basically forgot to do anything we were supposed to, including checking the 9/11 Memorial Wall, which is supposedly lovely).

Hey, girls, glad you somewhat enjoyed your first Minor League game. MCU Park is a good size for the NY-Penn League, though, at 7,500 and comparable to other High-A and Double-A park. Wow, though, $16 a ticket? I don't think I've paid more than like $13-14 and that's premium at Triple-A. Too bad the Star Wars guys sucked at this one. If you make it to Michigan next summer, I'd be happy to treat you both to a Minor League game, and promise a better experience (if we're still living here). -Mike